Next of Kin
1984
Comedy / Drama

Next of Kin
1984
Comedy / Drama
Plot summary
Twenty-three-year old Peter Foster is an only child who lives at home, where he constantly hears his parents arguing. Because Peter does nothing all day, the family goes to a clinic where a therapist videotapes them. After Peter watches his tape, he views the tape of a troubled Armenian family, who gave their only son away for adoption when they arrived in Canada. Peter decides to visit this family, and he pretends to be their son, Bedros Deryan. The Deryan family welcomes him with open arms, and Peter tries to patch up the poor relationship between George Deryan and his daughter Azah.
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
An underestimated and little known film
a promising debut
Perhaps true family ties are only possible with someone else's family; that's the premise behind writer/director Atom Egoyan's disarming feature debut. The film itself is admittedly slim, running only 72 minutes and resting on the most slender thread of a plot, in which the disenchanted only son of an alienated Anglo Saxon household 'adopts' an Armenian family by posing as their long-lost son, becoming so enriched by the experience he decides to make it a permanent arrangement. Nothing much else happens, but Egoyan fleshes out the skeletal framework with plenty of tender, funny observations, minimizing the video-age pretensions that would mark his subsequent features. In this slight, engaging fable the director exhibits all the earmarks of an embryonic talent taking his first, assured steps.